In the heart of Nai Sadak, amid the bustling markets and narrow lanes of Old Delhi, a craft that once defined the city’s literary pulse is quietly slipping away. Manual bookbinding, a tradition passed down through generations, struggles to survive against the tide of mass production and changing times. Yet, amid this change, few artisans continue to stitch the last threads. This second story in our series delves into the fading world of thread, glue, and paper—capturing not just a trade, but a piece of city’s vanishing heritage.
Tucked between the chaos of Old Delhi’s tangled wires, busy markets, and worn-out stone pavements lies Nai Sadak — once the heart of India’s literary and publishing world.
Decades ago, its narrow lanes overflowed with booksellers calling out titles, students haggling over second-hand textbooks, and stacks of freshly printed pages waiting to be stitched, trimmed, and bound by hand. Today, that echo has grown faint.
Only a few dimly lit shops remain, hidden behind the sparkle of saree showrooms and stacks of glossy stationery. Among them, barely three or four still carry the legacy of manual bookbinding, a craft that was once central to the area.
Families across Delhi would come to Nai Sadak to bind old notebooks and leftover pages from the previous year’s textbooks into new ones. Inside these fading ‘kar-khanas,’ elderly artisans, their fingers stiff from decades of thread and glue — continue the work that machines can’t quite replicate.
Each stitch, each press, each fold is a tactile story of endurance. But that story may soon end. The next generation has turned away. Their sons have pursued academics, their daughters have moved away from glue and paper.
No one wants to inherit the tools of their fathers.
Here, there are no machines. Only hands - calloused, steady, and practiced over decades. Stacks of OMR sheets from CBSE schools, rough school notebooks, government files and diaries wait to be bound. It’s the same process that has been passed down through generations: men sit cross-legged on the floor, stitching pages with thick thread, pressing the spine, cutting edges, and finally pasting covers — each book coming alive, one fold at a time.
A few shops selling school textbooks, file covers, entry books, attendance registers for schools, logbooks and large registers used in courts still have loyal workers binding these materials for them. Mohammad Maqsood, who has been binding books in Old Delhi since 1957, recalls his early days in the trade. “I don’t even remember my age when I must have started this,” he says.
“I was too small to recall, but as a curious kid, I would stand at some of these shops, watch people working, and earn money. Back then, there was no real focus on education in my family and I started doing this without realising I’d be doing it for this long.” “When I started, every alternate lane in Nai Sadak had 8 to 9 bookbinding shops, but now, you can’t even find that. You may walk into 20 shops and still not find anyone offering binding services. It’s all moved to factories now,” he adds.
Many of these workers began their careers early — some as young as 10 — drawn into the trade not by passion but out of necessity. Today, it’s mostly bulk commercial orders that keep their hands busy, not the neighbourhood trust that once defined the area.
Mohammad Yameen, another worker - a resident of Paharganj who works in a book binding shop at Chitla Gate, a short walk from Nai Sadak, explains the intricate nature of the craft. “Bookbinding is like a craft in itself because it’s not just about stitching. There are several steps involved. Five of us work together to bind a single book: one cuts the cover, another pastes glue on it, another folds the cover neatly from all sides. We also employ women who want to earn and send them the pages for stitching. They return the pages, and we do the final binding,” he says.
The process is labour-intensive and intricate, and it’s one that still draws people from outside Delhi. “Some people still come to Nai Sadak for special projects or to bind old photo albums using different cloths,” Yameen adds.
Yet, as the trade shifts away from the streets of Old Delhi to large-scale factories where binding is done in bulk — faster, cheaper, but soulless — the work here is more than just a trade; it’s a tradition, kept alive by hand. Nai Sadak, once the beating heart of India’s literary circuit, now struggles to remember the rhythm of its own story. Today, the landscape of the area is almost unrecognisable. Vinod Mehta, a stationery shop owner in Nai Sadak, laments the changes. “Saree and lehenga shops dominate nearly 70% of the market now. Only a handful of old bookshops cling to their corners, surrounded by glossy fashion boutiques and party wear showrooms. Along with the decline of bookstores, the dying trade of manual bookbinding is another silent casualty. We don’t get the same number of visitors we used to get ten years ago.”